Loch Ness

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

This
is an issue that I have felt very strongly about for sometime now, but I
haven’t known how to broach it in a politically correct way. Finally I
realized that there isn’t any politically correct way to say this
without hurting some peoples feelings (although I’m quite sure the
majority of people this blog refers to are illiterate, so maybe they
won’t find out). As Winston Churchill said, “You have enemies? Good.
That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” I wish
it was something bigger and more important that I was standing up for,
but it’s really quite idiotic and pathetic, but it bothers me, it irks
me, it gets a bee in my bonnet, so here it is. If you easily get your
feelings hurt or are going to judge me and think I’m mean, please stop
reading this blog now, it’s Shark Week, why are you reading anyway, go
tune into the Discovery channel and watch some poor guy get his leg or
head chomped off.

To
begin with I’m going to break down some really basic terms that I will
be using in this blog for my readers that are not instagram and social
network savvy;

hashtag-
a symbol (#) used to denominate the number sign. In today’s world
hashtag has a brand new meaning, now try to keep up mom, if you’re
reading. A # in front of a phrase is something you connect to a picture
or twitter feed. I still don’t understand how twitter works so I won’t
even get that advanced. So let me use an example, that works best, if I
was to post a picture of Stewie I might write underneath it, #stewie
#boxer #loveofmylife. Any person can click on my # and a bunch of
examples of each would come up. If you clicked on #boxer a bunch of
other boxers would come up. Make sense? Still with me mom?

duckface-
a girl that makes a face that strongly resembles a duck in a picture,
no teeth, slight upturned pout. Apparently they think this is
attractive, I’m still unsure if anyone else does.

selfie-
a picture that someone takes of themselves in the mirror or by simply
using the handy reverse camera function that most smart phones today
have. Generally this person is of the female orientation, and strangely
they also are duck facing. Now don’t get me wrong, a selfie is not a
picture someone else took of you, that is okay, unless you do it all the
time. A selfie is a picture taken by you, of you, for you.

Now
that that’s out of the way, let me digress a little bit and give you
the backstory on my personal social network. Because of the secret
society I belong to, I know more people then I’d say the average human
knows. In fact when my friends Joey and Sarah come out to visit me, we
inevitably run into someone I know everytime, no matter where in LA we
are, this has led Joey to believe I am the mayor of LA and in fact
lovingly has given me the nickname, Mayor. Truth is, it is a complete
coincidence that this happens when they come and just some random force
of nature, and generally I never run into people I know in this big
city, unless I’m with Sarah and Joey. I don’t tell them though, I just
pretend it happens all the time, it makes me feel like kind of a big
deal, which I’m not. I pretend not to see or hear Sarah lean over and
whisper into Joey’s shocked face that we have yet again run into another
friend of mine, “they’re in the secret society.” So I have a lot of
acquaintances. I have the normal amount of close friends, but A LOT of
acquaintances. So the way the social network thing goes is, I end up
having a lot of my secret society acquaintances on there. I may not be
all of their biggest fans, and I’m sure they don’t all think I’m the
bees knees, but it’s kind of an obligation to the secret society, we all
band together even though we all might not have everything in common
(the secret society is starting to sound like a cult, I do realize that,
it’s not, I promise).

Okay,
now that all that’s out of the way lets get down to brass tacks. I am
so fed up of looking at the same girls selfies day after day. I am
really irritated and resentful at girls who take selfies all the time
and girls who have duck faces in their selfies. Okay, so I know I
should just stop following them right? But I can’t, it’s like watching shark week, so intensely disturbing but so hard to look away. There are a few girls in
particular that I am thinking of, and like I said, I’m pretty sure none
of them know how to read, so I don’t think I have to worry about them
seeing this. So really, what in the world are these girls thinking? I
mean it really gets under my skin. They will post the exact same
shot, of their pursed duck lips in a pouty expressionless line, behind a
different background everyday. There’s this one girl I follow on
instagram who literally every day, sometimes three times a day posts the
exact same picture of herself in the various places she visits
throughout the day, my favorite part is her hashtags. She tags
#selfiewednesday, or #selfietuesday, or #selfiemonday, depending on the
day of the week. It doesn’t even make sense. Okay, #throwbackthursday
makes sense, and is cute when you post a picture of you when you were
five years old licking an ice cream cone in your undies. But
#selfiewednesday doesn’t even make sense! It’s not even an alliteration!
#flashbackfriday, #throwbackthursday, these make sense to me, but
#selfiewednesday is just an excuse to put another boring picture of
yourself up, and I’m sick of looking at you. And for fucks sake can you
have some other expression besides that toothless trying to be
seductive but look like a total jackass look. I mean, I am really upset
about these selfies guys, I don’t know why it disturbs me so much. I
know that a psychologist would say to me, “well usually the things that
irritate you in other people are the things you see in yourself that you
don’t like.” But I do not take selfies. I also am aware that
I am not God and have no business passing judgement on what people do
with their free time, but I am human and not Mother Teresa, so I do judge.

I
actually have a real plan to fix this problem, and trust me, it is a
problem. I know I’m not the only one that is extremely disturbed by the
level of vanity that has overcome social networking. I mean, my friend
Sherah, (about to throw you under the bus Sherah), texts me every other
day, screenshots of the culprits doing their thing, just in case I
missed it in my feed, because I’m not quite as glued to my instagram
feed as Sherah is. (By the way, completely unrelated, but Sherah is
single). I’ve got a plan to stop selfies, and I really think it’s a
solid one. I can’t fix the national debt. I can’t bring about world
peace. I’m not going to win a Nobel Prize for curing a disease. But I
can try and put a dent in selfies. As far as I am concerned you all get a
redo as of today. As far as I am concerned none of you have ever posted
one, including myself. The next person I see who posts a selfie will be
deleted immediately. Now I don’t consider myself so important that my
deleting them would affect their life in any negative way at all, but if
we all get together we can make a difference! If you all continue to
one by one delete the people you follow who post selfies, then
eventually there will be nobody left to look at their pictures, and they may
actually start posting some pictures of substance (like puppies or
food).

Who’s with me? I implore you to all join my cause, maybe if we all band together we can eradicate selfies forever!!